In the chapter titled “Winter” from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek she writes, “Obviously the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than the illuminator.” She goes on to describe an experiment of a mirror on snow reflecting the sky in its surface. “The dark is overhead and the light at my feet; I’m walking upside-down in the sky.” I believe that, through reading and writing poetry, one can process trauma, a secret shadow self, those dark nights of the soul, and thereby touch upon illuminating insights that lighten our being and lead toward healing and wholeness. The nature of poetry, its rhythm, rhyme, repetition, figurative language, order, and white spaces of silence offers an ideal structure for sorting through fears, pains, confusion, and other negative emotions. A falling leaf is lighter than my hand that catches the leaf, the hand that holds a pen and scribes a description of that leaf on the page. But the leaf is not lighter than the metaphor it engenders or even, simply, the poem on the page or on the breath of the reader.
How does that work, the power of poetry to transform a dark, laden poet into an illuminator of herself? Tess Gallagher’s poem Sing it Rough suggest that the poet must first name and acknowledge, voice the darkness…disclose our trauma, our dis-ease.
You can sing sweet
and get the song sung
but to get to the third dimension
you have to sing it rough,
hurt the tune a little.
Put enough strength to it
that the notes slip.
Then something else happens.
The song gets large.
Then with the tools of vowels and consonants, line and stanza breaks (brakes), metaphor, simile, rhythm, and poetic form the poet can re-frame the earlier dark scenario, put some space between her and the trauma to let some light shine in.
In my 30s I moved from the sunny high desert of Utah to a darker, rainy (but lush green) northwest. Within a year, my serotonin levels plummeted and I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder. This triggered the sun-less blossoming of a depressive disorder and I struggled for years. I realized early on that the only way to deal was to “take my depression/darkness to tea” and ask what it needed me to hear. I did this through poetry. Two winters ago, I realized that my depression had drifted away; so despite being recently unemployed, this poem came out:
How does that work, the power of poetry to transform a dark, laden poet into an illuminator of herself? Tess Gallagher’s poem Sing it Rough suggest that the poet must first name and acknowledge, voice the darkness…disclose our trauma, our dis-ease.
You can sing sweet
and get the song sung
but to get to the third dimension
you have to sing it rough,
hurt the tune a little.
Put enough strength to it
that the notes slip.
Then something else happens.
The song gets large.
Then with the tools of vowels and consonants, line and stanza breaks (brakes), metaphor, simile, rhythm, and poetic form the poet can re-frame the earlier dark scenario, put some space between her and the trauma to let some light shine in.
In my 30s I moved from the sunny high desert of Utah to a darker, rainy (but lush green) northwest. Within a year, my serotonin levels plummeted and I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder. This triggered the sun-less blossoming of a depressive disorder and I struggled for years. I realized early on that the only way to deal was to “take my depression/darkness to tea” and ask what it needed me to hear. I did this through poetry. Two winters ago, I realized that my depression had drifted away; so despite being recently unemployed, this poem came out:
Gradations of Gray
To become a true north-westerner
I must learn to gaze into the fog
rather than battleship through
the granite gray-green day
with sights only on another leaden tomorrow.
I must learn to let go of fog horns
that pierce and startle
through a pewter dusk
attempting to awaken the unknown
cinereous mystery
dappled light in day or night
smoky ashen ashes to ashes to
drab, dusty iron-clad will
livid purple-gray bruises
of yesterday, let go.
I must learn to adore
a muddled moon
somber silver
as well as the powdery pearl
of a Portland sun
oyster gray
shaded gray pine
astringent slate
stone cold winter
wet heather gray
or withered seared fields
from musty to neutral to peppery
dingy to dove gray
I must learn to distinguish
and esteem them all.
